Rachel M. SchappertThe Essence of Small Particulars:A Series of Material Poems

Reception:Friday, May 4, 2012, 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Imagine extracting meaning from the small and still:
the particulars of reality that we often overlook and surpass.
Within these Particulars, one may discover enigmatic anomalies.
Within these anomalies, an acute essence subsists.
And this Essence, on the periphery of what we generally perceive -
so shall connect us to a re-emerging truth of shifting proportions.

Rachel M. Schappert combines manufactured materials fused with collected organic matter. Through the process, a mysterious gathering of small hybrid objects emerge. Schappert considers the objects as poems and messages that question relationships between what is natural and what is constructed.

Nora Kobrinsky is a painter and printmaker. She earned her BFA (honours) from the University of Manitoba (2008) and participated in MAWA's (Mentoring Artists for Women's Art) foundation mentorship program (2008 - 2009). Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Manitoba as well as local and international print exchanges. Nora lives in Winnipeg where her studio is open to the public once a month as part of Winnipeg's First Fridays in the Exchange.

Collective Amnesia (CA) is an expose of memory erosion in the human geographic landscape. Encompassing history, ritual and revolution, paranoia of catastrophe and communication in the hyper digital age, this series explores traumatic stress as the unifying force. CA attempts to deconstruct knowledge in order to spark dialog of the turbulent past and the inevitable present. What happens to oral societies when their stories are lost? World catastrophes may influence religion, thus its traumas echo throughout the ages in the form of rituals. Do past act of rebellion influence present sub-cultures? Does the over stimuli of violence in media differ from the Wild West?

The majority of the paintings use old broken skateboards. These items had lost their functional use to become substrates in the series. Found in skate parks, riders abandoned and forgot them. The deformed surfaces serve as an explanatory backdrop to project a world view of CA. Figurative in nature, the paintings imbue the Symbolist style of the late 1800's to early 1900's, using Renaissance influences. Minerals were gathered and hand ground to be used through the series. Painters of the early eras used these minerals in the original pallet, but recently synthetic pigments have replaced them, another product of CA.

"...shifting patterns of consumption initiate new experiences of embodiment; and embodied experience interacts with codes of representation to generate new kinds of textual worlds. In fact, each category--production, signification, consumption, bodily experience, and representation--is in constant feedback and feedforward loops with the others."- Katherine Hayles "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers"

"The great inventions are tragic... You don't accept them as facts. You get inside of them, and fight them. For the moment, were not doing it. The Ancients did it. Whether they were philosophers, painters, architects, they fought against technology and they fashioned something else out of it."- Paul Virilio "The Accident of Art"

By combining and recontextualizing the above ideas, I create dialectics involving representation/identity issues of the body in relation to painting and current advanced technologies. Through fusing the act of painting with technology, it is my intention to reinvent the entrenched tradition of representing the body in the context of a technological and dematerialized culture. Read more >>>

The fecundity of the insect world is almost inconceivable. To each human life, there are more than 200 million insects. More horrifying perhaps are their fleshy, squirming larva, whose only purpose is to eat. While humans celebrate individuality, there exist countless amorphous beings, gorging and gorging themselves, often cannibalizing each other, growing so fast their exoskeletons are unable to keep up. With each molt a termite queen can add extra sets of ovaries, her abdomen growing to the point where she becomes a large white mass, as author Annie Dillard said, "I have seen a film of a termite queen as big as my face, dead white and featureless, glistening with slime, throbbing and pulsing our rivers of globular eggs the whole world is an incubator for incalculable numbers of eggs, each one coded minutely and ready to burst." Producing up to 86,000 eggs a day and having grown to the point where her legs are tiny and useless, the termite queen should be the ultimate symbol of fertility instead of such things as bunnies and chocolate eggs. Important evolutionary developments brought our ancient ancestors to the modern humans we are today, and we value these changes as well as the power of creation and life... Read more >>>

In media arts, generally, the visual dominates the attention of the spectator with sound being little more than a supplementary feature. The Sound of Vision sets aside this hierarchy by using video and film as a conduit to express a desire for a more aurally inclusive means of perception. All videos exhibited here display a high rate of attention to sound (if not considered equal from the point of inception) for use not only as soundtrack accompaniment, but as a force on its own. In this way, The Sound of Visionhopes to provide an access point for an awakening of the aural senses.

His inspiration began early, studying under Gissur Eliasson on Saturday mornings at the old Law Court Buildings. His summers were spent at Kildonan and Assiniboine Park attending the 'Art in the Park' classes, an innovative program developed by Betty Nickerson.

He was later influenced at the University of Manitoba by George Swinton, Don Reichert, and Ivan Eyre, graduating from the Department of Fine Arts with a BFA.

Now having formally retired from teaching, Gary is devoting much of his time to his passion. His drawing inspiration comes from nature, light, line and colour.

The "Bold and Baffling" series is inspired by the soap opera of a similar name and deals with the cycles of addiction (emotional) and it's biological underpinnings. I am fascinated by these cyclical patterns. Like sexual pornography, emotional pornography stimulates just enough to keep the addict interested but not enough to be satiated. Soap operas use emotion as their raw material just as porn uses the body. The defining quality of the soap opera form is its seriality.

I am intrigued by cyclical patterns and during the making of this work, found a connection to patterns of weather, recycling, plumbing, and human behaviour - it functions ad infinitum.

In this show, the people and gorillas are coded. The 'models' are the unattainable and unfeeling. And the gorillas are the love addicts, pining for their love objects. The landscape refers to Iceland but is the stage where the drama unfolds.

While as an artist in residency (Iceland), I discovered the yuletide lads of Icelandic culture. They are tricksters and children are warned to watch out for them especially at Christmas. In this work these... read more

With every meeting of two cultures, there is a struggle. There is a desire to make sense of ones identity and the identity of ones home. The colonization of our country was callous and forceful and I cannot bring myself to be proud of those origins. However, even though I feel false to claim a genuine belonging here, this is my home.

New World Aristocracy is a series of drawings that explore the connections between European leaders and the land they conquered. The struggle to choreograph an image that will make sense of the figure's place in this land is apparent. Tactile pieces of imagery, shallowly assimilated from their surroundings, offer the figure symbolic elements. They adorn themselves with expropriated visuals that hold bond to the new land. Yet, however the two elements combine, the juxtapositions always appear surreal. The figures are unnatural and erratic.

The attempt to fabricate a new history representative of ones mixed feelings of belonging, in the end only solidifies and documents the original struggle.

An obvious reference to Cage's classic "4:33", this piece is entirely composed of pauses within recorded compositions of rock, jazz, and classical music. This silence, when enhanced by Blom, proves to be far from silent. Unintentional noises, lingering notes or perhaps even voices are all uncovered and teased out from the gaps between tracks.

Artist Biography

Conny Blom (1974) is a Swedish visual artist based in Gothenburg, Sweden and Bukovje, Slovenia. He took his MFA at the Valand School of Fine Art in Gothenburg 2007, and has already had a long row of relevant exhibitions. During 2007 he participated in the 2nd Moscow Biennale (Matter & Memory Show), and in 2008 he has for example exhibited at Casino Luxembourg, (in Luxembourg) in the exhibition P2P together with amongst others Jonathan Monk, Rodney Graham and Nedko Solakov, and at Centre d'Art Contemporain La Synagogue de Delme in France, with Daniel Buren, Simon Starling, Elmgreen & Dragset, and more, in the show La Marge d'Erreur. In 2009 several solo exhibitions are planned in Sweden as well as in Slovenia.

In his work Conny Blom deals with defining issues of our modern society, our living conditions and the rights of the individual versus the society and the economical forces. Balancing between the poetic and the subversive, Blom uses material from pop culture as well as iconic pieces of contemporary art to comment, question and subvert established hierarchies. By focusing on the otherwise overlooked, the in-between, and the unseen, reediting it into new aesthetic experiences, Blom provides new perspectives and brings into light previously untold stories.

The Goal is a single work, or several pieces of work, which stem from my recent obsession with the story of Don Giovanni and Soren Kierkegaard's salient essay on the subject from his book Either/Or. The series exists as aphorisms, like cells in a battery; a synecdoche.

The drawings are absurd and pataphysical, they are humorous and also sometimes deeply troubling. Statues that drag our anti-heroes to hell permeate squares where there is no landscape, no context, no consequence, only what is immediately perceived. The Goal exists as a record of an attempt to quantify the lifestyle of the amoral with no intention of judgement. I hope to have created a pictorial record of both myself, as an animal, and a concise study of the aesthetic sphere of existence.

My other drawings act as aphorisms as well, without a perceived theme. Whether they be the humorous images of deer as humans, or small episodes of Franz Kafka as an unlikely forest ranger, these drawings draw on our ability to create a narrative or to ignore the absurdity of them.

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

March 27 - May 9, 2009

Natalie FergusonPom-Pom Grow Op

Curated by Przemek Pyszczek

Opening Reception:
Friday, March 27, 2009, 7:30pm - 10:00pm

Raised in La Salle, Manitoba, Natalie Ferguson has always had an awareness of the human interference in a process that seems so natural to most.
The conflict between artifice and natural process in agricultural production is reflected in her series Pom-pom Grow Op. The camera lens distorts reality,
but by imbuing foreign objects into a natural setting, Ferguson celebrates the tension of multiple perceptions by creating installation works that tell stories
about the people that have inhabited spaces and environments that would not otherwise exist.

Although pom-poms are harmless, inviting, and recognizable objects, their appearance in nature and photography is unsettling. In Weightless, the emergence
of pom-poms suggests that they have been born out of some sort of agricultural intervention. The cultivation of these objects then continues in Hay bales,
where the pom-poms are being harvested for whatever properties they possess. Trickling down the food chain, the pom-poms eventually wreak havoc on the
animal world. Are these pom-poms mere objects, are they foodstuffs, or are they intoxicants?

--- Przemek Pyszczek, curator

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

February 12 - March 21, 2009

Wilford BarringtonRecent Works

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

December 12, 2008 - Jaunary 24, 2009

AEROGRAD

Galen Johnson

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

October 24 - November 29, 2008

Surfacing

Collin Zipp

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

September 10 - October 11, 2008

Mixed Media & Installation

Kazu

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

July 18 - August 16, 2008

The Swag Bag Project

Curated by Kerri-Lynn Reeves

The Swag Bag Project looks at gift economy and its role in contemporary art and life. In order to connect the Regina art community in its inflated Open Engagement form with the art community in her hometown, Reeves gathered together a group of Winnipeg artists that made Swag Bags to be gifted to the conference participants.

The nature of a gift is to create social bonds by solidifying connections between giver and recipient. A community, instant or gradual, temporary or lasting, is created through the gifts inherent ability to create such bonds. Just as the gift acknowledges and celebrates the recipient, the giver of the gift must automatically be considered in order to avoid a diminishment of spirit of the individuals and the community.

In this project, the communities in Winnipeg and Regina became bonded through the gifting of the Swag Bags, which are in essence mini retrospective exhibitions of Winnipeg art. As gifts demand to be paid forward through direct reciprocity or gifting to others, a site has been created where this reciprocation can be recognized. This website is the place in which the gift can keep on giving. While some pieces in the Swag Bags have specific instructions on how to reciprocate or use the gift; others...read more >>

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

May 16 - June 28, 2008

The Drawn Collage

Dan Donaldson

Artist statement:

The title of this show is based on a series of drawings I have been making for the last year or so. There are a couple of different series that encompass this theme and title, the most prevalent being my compressed series, also known as "Hi-Lited 4 x 4's". It was this series that lead me towards the body of work I am doing now.

The Hi-Lited 4 x 4's began at my desk at work, during one of my coffee breaks. I felt the need to make some art, and had plenty of paper to work on, but could only find a black pen, pencil, and four Hi-Liter markers at my disposal. I decided to make the best with what I had, and started making art (for what ever reason) in a compressed four inch square area on my paper. When ever I had free time at work, I would do another, and eventually I started making them at my studio, and at home. Feeling the itch to work larger, I took the same materials and inspiration, and began expanding the themes and dimensions of these works. The bigger the works have become, the more diverse my materials have also become. You can only push Hi-Liter markers so far (and I have), so I began incorporating pencil crayons, gouache, and acrylics...read more >>

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

March 7 - April 25, 2008

Release Metaphors:Mythos and Messiahs

Paintings by Jenny Arenson &
Drawings by Patrick Treacy

Curated by Aldona Dziedziejko

RELEASE METAPHORS: Mythos and Messiahs is a two-person exhibition featuring works by Winnipeg-based artist Patrick Treacy and New York City-based artist Jenny Arenson (b. in Winnipeg). Both artists consider escape metaphors that reverberate throughout everyday thought and practice.

Treacy explores escape scenarios involving dogs, wolves and manikins to give form to everyday hopes and anxieties culturally experienced and expressed through myths (Mythos), origin stories, dramas and fictions. The scenarios possess the performative and hypnotic aspects reminiscent of Houdini's stunts. In some of Treacy's works, there also exist subtle references to the story of the founders of Rome, brothers Romulus and Remus, who in their infancy fled from a threat by a resentful patriarch. The twins survived in a wolf den, nursed by an alpha female. These stories point to a more general preoccupation with the highlights in the anthropological history of Western Civilisation.

Arenson paints various individuals (Jewish and non-Jewish) as Hassidic Jews by bestowing on them the identifying marks and accessories such as... read more >>

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

February 14 - March 5, 2008

Reiki Visions: Crystal LandscapesColor pencil drawings by Romi Topper

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

December 14, 2007 - January 26, 2008

TRACES -"oh kitty my darling remember, that the doom will be mine if I stay..."Drawings by Michael Benjamin Brown

Winnipeg artist Michael Benjamin Brown's latest series of works consists of sequential ink drawings on paper that aim to capture the essence and the hubs of transatlantic jaunts between Winnipeg and London. Whether these travels are imaginary or actual, Brown fights to give form to the intangible universal core that unites all city-dwelling experiences, sidestepping that which differentiates them. However, it is a particular sort of city that Brown explores; not a vinyl and glass metropolis of today, but a turn-of-the-century capital with a rich heritage of modernity. Brown's illustrations are of London and Winnipeg, but for a fleeting moment the cities in the images could be mistaken for 19th century Chicago, Paris or Berlin. We are given very few visual referents to be able to tell immediately. Brown positions the viewer as looking up at an immense sky, that almost as an afterthought, is populated with building rooftops, exterior siding, trimwork, cornice molding, stone and concrete walls, fire escapes, and grounding antennas. These all-pervasive details suggest a milieu rather than a specific location. read more >>

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

The vision of Grimhaven is one of beautiful desperation, fascinating decrepitude and inadvertent jocularity. Nestled lovingly between
desolate concrete vistas and the tenuous dreams of urban family mythology, this is a world where irony and transient flotsam collide within the familiar
context of the everyday.

Gordon Arthur is a traveller through this parallel world. Through his captured visions we are witness to the crossing over points in which our
known world and that of Grimhaven merge. He has adroitly captured the essence of his surroundings via a medium that is germane to the subject matter.

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

September 20 - October 20, 2007

Perjinkities:Art work created by Art City sketchbook workshop participants, age 6 - 16, with guest artist James Culleton

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 20, 5 PM
Artists in attendance

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

August 15 - September 18, 2007

Strangelove:Aldona Dziedziejko & Sylvia MatasA two-person exhibition

Opening Reception: Wednesday, August 15, 8 PM
Artists in attendance

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

July 24 - August 14, 2007

Pale Shelter by Leslie Supnet

Curated by Aldona Dziedziejko

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 26, 7 PM
Artist in attendance

Winnipegfs visual artist Leslie Supnet seems fascinated with what Susan Sontag, speaking about literature, called the gcreation of inwardness.h
Introspection is the necessary ingredient in all of art making; however, some artists including Supnet seek to a greater degree all that is personal and lyrical.
In her own words, Supnet deals with gvarious subject matter and themes, such as identity, isolation, longing and despair all with a touch of whimsy and the surrealc
h and is subsequently interested in using drawing gas a mechanism to cope with the little tragedies we all face day to day.h A sizeable portion of her still growing oeuvre
is represented at Semai Gallery with the hope of nurturing her artistic production.

Pale Shelter - Drawings by Leslie Supnet at Semai is showing concurrently with the Royal Art Lodge exhibition Where is Here? at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
But rather than engaging the question of location Pale Shelter considers nostalgia and its subtle range of emotional hues. Supnet shares with the Winnipeg
artist collective their signature affection for fantastic characters, living at an angle to society but nonetheless beguiling, rendered with faux naivete which tempers
their menace. read more >>

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

June 22 - July 22, 2007

Drawing Breath:Intuitive Figure Drawings by Robert Pasternak

Opening Reception: Friday, June 22, 7:30 - until late
Artist in attendance

Also meet the artist in the afternoon of July 7, 2007 (07.07.07)

The poster advertising Robert Pasternakfs current exhibition of small-scale drawings depicts the artist conjuring up fiery breath,
charming its snake-like coils towards his Solar Plexus - an energy centre of the body that resonates with emotional vitality and awareness.
This dramatic composition signals that in this latest series of pen drawings Pasternak moves towards the presentation of his farsighted
purpose with a magicianfs flare and a prophetfs insight. The forms present in the business-card sized drawings shown here have
preoccupied this Winnipeg artist since the early nineties; and over the years he has been distilling the curvilinear figures down
to their essence, something that he has achieved here. The drawings first began as doodles on napkins in coffee shops, and
they continue here in a similar spirit as a series of framed works done over a period of one month plus a collage of sketches
on bus transfers... read more >>

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

We have just received 84 copies of the PREMIRE ISSUE on May 15th. They are beautiful magazines! Drop by to take a copy to enrich your life with art!

For more information about Magnum Opus Magazine and PDF version of the magazine, visit their website http://magnopus.com

May 18 - June 15, 2007

cnot a mirror, but a hammercArtist Trading Cards

Opening Reception: Friday, May 18, 8pm - 9:30pm

cnot a mirror, but a hammerc is a touring exhibition of artist trading cards from around the world exploring the theme
of artist as worker/ worker as artist. Curated from a trade-off held in Parksville, BC in 2006. Co-sponsored by the Parksville MayWorks Festival and the Semai Gallery.

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

Semai's up-coming exhibition, drawings by a Japanese artist Natsuko Yoshino, is previewed by an art critique Lorne Roberts in the newest editions of GalleriesWest Magazine.
For details, read the page 43 of the current issue!

Semai Gallery on Bravo!TV

From January 20, 2007

Semai Gallery will appear on Bravo!TV from January 20, 2007, so please keep your eye on TV!

December 28, 2006 - January 20, 2007

Power to the Artistby Paul Butler

Reception: December 28, 5 - 8PM
Artist in attendance

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

December 02 - 16, 2006

Before-Xmas ExhibitionA collection of works by Winnipeg artistsFind the best Xmas gifts ever!

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

November 23 - 30, 2006

Owning Winnipeg by Adrian GoreaReproductions of original worksand documentation

Opening Reception: November 25, 8 - 10 PM
Artist in attendance

Gorea, originally from Romania, age 27, is presenting numerous duplications of his own drawings,
which he has been collecting since he was very little. The horizontal presentation of his drawings not only fits the narrow space of the gallery,
but it was a necessity to complete his documentation project called "Owninig Winnipeg."

He somehow claims that he owns various parts
of Winnipeg by his act of documentation. What has he done? Find it out in Semai Gallery.

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

November 02 - 21, 2006

that'sneighbourinstallation by Kazu

Opening Reception: November 02, 8 - 10 PM
Artist in attendance

Free your creative thoughts and imagination

thatfsneighbour, an installation (assemblage) piece by Kazu is the result of his spontaneous and intuitive response to the objects he has acquired,
responding to the narrow space of the gallery.

As Kazu says, gwhat you see is what it is, and how you feel is what you feel,h interpretation of his work is all up to the viewerfs personal feelings and imagination.

Things in the world are not always about black and white: the gray area in between possesses immense flexibility and potential.
So free your creative thoughts and imagination, and find what his installation piece means to you!

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

September 26 - October 29, 2006

Scouting by Noam Gonick

One of the most prominent young filmmakers in Canada, Noam Gonick has presented films at the Venice International Film Festival,
the Berlin Film Festival, TIFF, Sundance and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Semai Gallery is currently showcasing 135 pieces of his location scouting photographs, photos taken for selecting locations for his films. Take a look at the
film locations (all in Winnipeg) of Hey, Happy! (2001) and Stryker (2004) from a
filmmaker's point of view!

More information and some images from the exhibition are available in the exhibition page.

July 28, 2006

Semai Gallery's official opening day - 11:00am
(No special reception will be held for the opening.)

Semai Gallery is currently showcasing Iwasaki's own works as a pilot exhibition to examine the function of the gallery space.